These are the sermons that I preach each week. And some other things, too.

Friday, July 10, 2015

Progressive Christianity: God's Potent Love

Rachel begins her last chapter, 'Living the Questions' with a
very touching story.

Once, when I was small, my eczema
flared up so badly that I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned in my bed for
hours, frantically scratching my arms and legs until they bled onto the sheets.
Every hour or so, I called for my mother or father, who rotated the task of
lathering my body with lotion and putting fresh, cool socks over my hands.
Sometimes they prayed with me. Sometimes they held me or stroked my hair as I
cried into my pillow.

At
some point in the night, just as my father was about to leave me after another
rotation, I asked him why God let this happen to me, why God didn’t make my
eczema go away. I remember that he stood by my bedroom door, where the soft
glow of my nightlight illuminated his face and the lines on his forehead. I
remember that he had tears in his eyes.

“I
don’t know,” he said, after clearing his throat. “But I know that he loves
you.”

He
turned away, gently closed the door, and I listened to his slow, heavy
footsteps trigger creaks in the floorboards all the way to the living room. My
father, who had committed his life to Christian education, who could read the
Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek, who had a shelf full of
commentaries and a wall full of diplomas, who
delivered beautiful sermons and wrote eloquent papers, didn’t know.

At
first I was angry; then I was fearful. But as I lay in the dark, scratching and
crying and praying, I realized that no other answer would have been right. No
other answer could do justice to the question. Twenty years later, I’m
convinced it is the most important thing my father ever told me.

There is so much good reflected in what happened here. First,
there is the example of good parents who cared about their daughter. I know
that this should be a given, but to an increasing measure it is no longer.
Then, there is Rachel's question about why God was letting her suffer with the
eczema. That's the right question to ask. It reflects training (by her parents)
to think in terms of what God is doing. Again, for Christians, that should be a
given. However … Then, there is her father's response. It's not just the words,
though they are important. He is concerned for his daughter and her suffering,
and he lets her see that in his tears. Without this the words that follow could
have been interpreted as just words. But the tears make clear that that is not
the case. And then, there are the words. First, the admission
of ignorance. How freeing it is to be able to say, 'I don't know'. Or at least, coming to the point of being able to say that was
freeing for me. And then, those final words: 'But I know that he loves
you.' This is her father's expression of faith which he wants his daughter to
imitate. 'Hold on to the love of God.' I can understand why this stands out as
a precious memory for Rachel. There is something of beauty here.

I hesitate to comment further on this. It really is
beautiful. But I think that taking just one more step would have added so much
for Rachel's benefit at that moment and for the rest of her life.

The notion that God loves us is simply astounding. And the
amazement only increases as we discover again and again how we by no means
deserve His love. Clinging to that love makes life work. But the way that that
Rachel's father expressed it could lead someone to think that God's love is powerless.
'Oh yes, He loves me, but He can't help me right now. He can't actually do
anything about my situation.' And that makes love mere sentiment. So, God
really likes us, but He has no ability to bring about any change. That means
that we are at the mercy of whatever it is that brings evil into our lives,
whether eczema or worse.

As I read the Bible I have to conclude that God's love is
more than mere sentiment. God's love is strong. It is powerful. It does bring
about change. So, I think that it would have been that much better if Rachel's
dad had also said, 'And because of His love, He is doing something in this that
will bring about much good.'

Now how could he have said that? There is evil in this
situation - and in so many other situations. How can good be associated with
evil? I don't know how God does it, but He uses evil to bring about good. There
are many examples of that in the Bible, but the best example is the cross.

Does anyone doubt that what Jesus suffered on that Friday was
evil? And why was He there, suffering that evil? Because the
Father wanted Him to. Time and again, Jesus talks about the Father as
'the one who sent Me', a sending that climaxed at the
cross. And in the Garden of Gethsemane, what was Jesus wrestling with? 'Are you
sure that You want Me to go to the cross?' The Father
wants Him to go because it is through the cross that we will be rescued. He is
going to use the awful evil of that day to bring about amazing good.

And that is what we need to tell ourselves and each other as
we have to deal with evil. 'God will use this for good.'

And we know that for those who love
God all things [including evil] work together for good, for those who are
called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

The good that comes from the evil we suffer is for the sake of
other around us as well as for ourselves. Enduring evil in this way is an act
of love. And again, Jesus' suffering is the example.

Now, why is this important? It gives hope. Be careful here.
Hope is not just wishful thinking. To hope is simply to wait for God to keep a
promise that He has given us. It is His promise to use our experiences of evil
to bring about much good. Hoping is simply waiting for that to happen. And that
means that our suffering the evils of this world has a purpose. It is part of
God's plan to bring about good in this world. And knowing that helps us to
endure it.

So, when some evil has just hit we might wonder what God is
doing. We might have to admit that we don't exactly know what He's up to. But
we can cling to the certainty of His powerful love that is using that evil to
bring about good - for others and ourselves - in some wise way.